Adapting to node failure in sensor network query processing

  • Authors:
  • Alan B. Stokes;Alvaro A. A. Fernandes;Norman W. Paton

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom;School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom;School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • BNCOD'13 Proceedings of the 29th British National conference on Big Data
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

The typical nodes used in mote-level wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are often brittle and severely resource-constrained. In particular, nodes are often battery-powered, thereby making energy depletion a significant risk. When changes to the connectivity graph occur as a result of node failure, the overall computation may collapse unless it is capable of adapting to the new WSN state. Sensor network query processors (SNQPs) construe a WSN as a distributed, continuous query platform where the streams of sensed values constitute the logical extents of interest. Crucially, in the context of this paper, they must make assumptions about the connectivity graph of the WSN at compile time that are likely not to hold for the lifetime of the compiled query evaluation plans (QEPs) the SNQPs generate. This paper address the problem of ensuring that a QEP continues to execute even if some nodes fail. The goal is to extend the lifetime of the QEP, i.e., the period during which it produces results, beyond the point where node failures start to occur. We contribute descriptions of two different approaches that have been implemented in an existing SNQP and present experimental results indicating that each significantly increases the overall lifetime of a query compared with non adaptive approach.